Flyers retain No. 11 pick in NHL draft

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly reveals the golden ticket with the Colorado Avalanche for number 1 in the NHL Draft Lottery at the TSN studios in Toronto on Monday April 29, 2013. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Aaron Vincent Elkaim)

The Flyers lost their last game of the season Monday night, suffering a shutout in the draft lottery. It wasn’t exactly unexpected, considering their warming trend near season’s end burned any real chance of them earning a magic ping-pong ball, and their season-closing win in Ottawa alone dropped their position among the 14 non-playoff teams from No. 8 to No. 11.

So the Flyers went into the NHL Draft Lottery with a 1.5 percent chance of earning the No. 1 overall pick. They didn’t bother sending a representative, and you wonder if anyone hung around the office charged with the task of tuning in to the NBC Sports Network’s thrilling draft lottery show.

When the lottery finally did go off, the Flyers retained the No. 11 overall pick, while the Colorado Avalanche drew the winning number, and defenseman Seth Jones - who started skating as a tyke in Denver and who counts Colorado franchise icon Joe Sakic as a family friend - might as well start looking for condos in downtown Denver.

One down ... hopefully at least 10 other studs in this draft?

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The real disappointment for the Flyers’ bosses, of course, was missing the playoffs. In a draft this deep, they all would rather have seen what the club did, which was finish strong. By winning 10 of their last 15 games, the Flyers recovered from being one of the NHL’s worst teams to ... well, one of the NHL’s worst teams.

But one that thinks it proved it wasn’t going to be a Draft Lottery Show contestant for long.

“It’s been so many years playing in the playoffs,” Jake Voracek said Sunday, “and not being able to be in there, obviously, it’s disappointing. Especially when we have a good team.”

“We’re young, we’re a fast team. We can do a lot of good things,” Claude Giroux added. “Not being able to make the playoffs, it’s frustrating. But at the same time, we’ve just got to learn from this.

“There’s no real expectations (next season). It’s just go out there, play your game. We have new pieces to the team and stuff, so you can see at the end of the season we got together, got closer, and started playing our game a little bit more.”

Danny Briere is expected to be one of the first changes in the offseason. If the Flyers don’t trade him by the end of June, he’ll likely be given a compliance buyout. And Briere has a no-trade clause. He didn’t sound any closer to being willing to sign off on a trade Sunday as he did at the trade deadline four weeks ago.

“It’s out of my control,” Briere said of his professional future. “That’s not something that I’ve been approached with. I’ve said it all along, my family’s here, my kids are here. This is my first choice, this is where I want to be. But I understand it’s a business, so we’ll see happens with that. My first goal is to be here.

“It’s part of the business,” Briere added. “It’s not fun, it’s not easy. But I see it as trade rumors. I’ve been through them before in my career. I try to approach it the same way. But I also understand it’s part of the game. With the new CBA, that’s the thing that came out with the buyouts. Unfortunately I could be one of the guys that pays the price for it. I’ve also said before that there’s also so many good things that have happened over the course of my career because of the CBA, that it wouldn’t be right to complain about it.”

The Flyers are sending a strong mini-contingent to the IIHF World Championship tournament in Sweden and Finland next month. For Team Canada, Claude Giroux, Matt Read, Wayne Simmonds and Luke Schenn are expected to play. Jakub Voracek should line up for the Czechs and Erik Gustafsson is a strong possibility for the Swedes, while Oliver Lauridsen is almost confirmed for the Danes.

For the U.S., Flyers prospect Cal Heeter will be a backup goalie, and prospect Marcel Noebels will be with Team Germany. ... Oh, and Ilya Bryzgalov is set as the No. 1 goalie for Team Russia. His backup? Sergei Bobrovsky.

Hopefully the media won’t focus on their 2-year-old personal rivalry and try to write like responsible journalists when it comes to Bryz The Dizz.